Empire of Light s-3

by Gary Gibson

  'Why not?'

  She had slipped her jacket off as he spoke, revealing bare shoulders poking above an armless vest. 'Because I don't want to think about that right now,' she answered.

  Corso fell silent, watching as she pulled the vest up over her head before dropping it to the floor. His mouth become instantly dry as he studied her smooth belly and small firm breasts.

  'I ought to warn you I'm not in the best of shape right now,' he said.

  'Just tell me if it hurts,' she answered, quickly unzipping her boots and throwing them to one side. Her trousers and underwear followed a moment later.

  Corso stared at her in the dark, feeling his body respond instinctively despite his injuries and the medication, and he was suddenly reluctant to recall just how long it was since he'd last been with a woman. There'd been no time for anything but work over the past few years.

  She pulled the blanket to one side and slid on top of him, straddling his hips. Without thinking, Corso slid his hands up the taut surface of her belly. She quickly manoeuvred him inside her, and then reached down with both hands to grip his sides, taking care to avoid touching him where the caterpillar-like creature knitted his flesh together. Before long she was rocking her hips back and forth in a steady rolling motion that shot spikes of pleasure up his spine.

  He started to thrust, raising his hips from the mattress, but she shook her head. 'No. Stay still.'

  He watched her for the next several minutes, with no small pleasure, as her breath started to emerge in short sharp gasps, her head tipping back as she came closer and closer to climax. He reached up, sliding his hands further up and gently cupping her small breasts again. Her flesh felt so supple and smooth, and entirely human, that he found it impossible to believe her story. She still felt completely real.

  The look of intense concentration on her face made him remember other times, first on board Hyperion and later in a Bandati tower on a distant world long since wiped out. He wondered again about her story: if she really had been recreated somehow, reborn from the flesh of one of those alien starships…

  That killed it for him.

  He felt his ardour rapidly drain away, but a few seconds later Dakota gripped him painfully hard, before letting her forehead drop against his chest.

  After a minute she looked up and gave him a questioning look.

  'I think it's the meds,' he muttered, embarrassed.

  She gave him a look of careful appraisal, as if she wasn't sure whether to believe him or not, then wordlessly lifted herself up and off him, before dropping down beside him, and pressing up close. The heat of her skin felt like a furnace against his own.

  'If you had that performance planned, I hope you warned the staff to give us some privacy,' he muttered.

  'I don't think we're likely to be disturbed.' She reached up to stroke a finger along his jaw line. 'That man Breisch, who is he?'

  'He taught me how to fight.'

  She raised herself on one elbow and gazed down at him. 'What happened to you, Lucas? I saw the whole thing, and you killed that guy in cold blood. It was… brutal. I thought you stood against that kind of thing.'

  Corso shrugged. 'Seems it's the only way to get anyone here to listen to me. A lot of people want me dead, and the rest won't take me seriously unless I play them at their own game.'

  'But that doesn't mean you had to-'

  'It does,' he retorted. 'Things got a lot harder once you were gone, Dakota. The Fleet's lost most of its power, we're a spent force – and the Freehold isn't the only one desperate to undermine us at every opportunity.'

  'But you had it in your power to place sanctions against uncooperative worlds.'

  'Yes, but not the moral authority, and their governments knew it. The only people who were getting hurt by the sanctions were refugees dumped on worlds without the resources to deal with them. Too many people were dying, Dakota. We had to give in, especially once some of the navigators broke ranks.'

  She bristled. 'But we were only taking on navigators if we were sure we could trust them.'

  'There's only so many old-school machine-heads available, so of course we had to take in navigator candidates whose backgrounds we couldn't always check and loyalties we could never be sure of. Most of the first batch of navigators, like Lamoureaux, were on our side, but two thirds have burned out for some reason we don't understand. As it is, we're barely maintaining the lines of physical communication that hold the Consortium together.'

  'It's that bad?'

  'After you left, I split my time between Ocean's Deep and Redstone, trying to stop things falling apart here after the coup. At first I got treated like a returning hero, but it wasn't long before I realized I'd made a lot of enemies without really trying. They were practically lining up to call me out with challenges. I learned to fight because I couldn't see any way out of that, not if I was to have any hope of retaining some influence. I wanted to show them I could meet them on their own terms and still beat them. But instead things just went from bad to worse.'

  'But now we know the Mos Hadroch is real.' She again traced the curve of his jaw with a fingertip. 'You found it and you brought it back? Now you know what it is, am I right?' There was an intensity in her expression, a touch of avarice to the gleam of her eyes.

  'No, it's still locked away on board the ship that carried it back here. That's the reason the contest took place – Jarret wanted control of that ship and whatever it brought back with it.'

  He saw shock alternating with anger in her expression, as she replied. 'Things haven't really changed so much while I've been away, have they?'

  'I'm afraid not, no.'

  'All right, so what do we know about the Mos Hadroch?'

  'Nothing, really. It's not even certain we did find it. What we found was the body of an Atn sealed up inside a hidden passageway on an abandoned clade-world. And…'

  He had been on the verge of saying Whitecloud's real name. The sedatives were making it hard to think straight.

  'It's possible what we're looking for is locked away inside the Atn's body,' he continued quickly. 'Except, as soon as it was brought on board the Mjollnir, it was locked away under Senate orders. The Legislate's arranged a secret deal to have the thing's remains shipped to Sol as soon as some essential repairs are finished.'

  Dakota was staring at him open-mouthed. 'I… I didn't know any of this,' she said finally. 'We can't just leave it in the hands of people who don't know what they've got. Not if you've really found the Mos Hadroch.'

  He glanced past her towards the window. Dawn's first light was reddening the horizon. 'Jarret's death means I can't be challenged over the Mjollnir any more, but there are people in the Senate who'll do almost anything, I reckon, to stop us getting hold of what Driscoll found.'

  Dakota pushed herself up on one elbow and gazed down at him with a determined expression. 'Then obviously we need to get on board before that happens,' she said. 'We have to take the Mos Hadroch somewhere else.'

  'Where?'

  'Deep into the heart of Emissary territory,' she told him. A long, long way away.'

  'Take it into Emissary territory.' Corso stared at her, slack-jawed. 'You have to be kidding me.'

  'We need to head for a cache located deep inside their territory, which has certain unique vulnerabilities the Mos Hadroch is designed to exploit. We'll have backup, though: alien weapons, hundreds of them. If it comes down to a confrontation – and it almost certainly will – we should have a good chance of surviving.'

  'And I suppose if I asked where you found these "weapons", you'd tell me?'

  She smiled faintly. 'Not just yet.'

  He groaned and started to haul himself out of the bed.

  'Are you sure you should be doing that?' Dakota asked.

  'Fuck it, it's been, what – two days now?' He winced as he lowered his feet to the floor. 'I don't know what the hell might have been happening in the meantime.'

  He padded naked over to a locker, grunting in satisfaction
when he found his clothes neatly pressed and waiting for him.

  Corso started to get dressed, moving slowly and carefully, and clearly still in a great deal of pain. 'Here's the way I see it, Dakota. I sent a frigate, which also happens to be one of the Freehold's few assets of any value, out to a remote location on your say-so. That challenge I just barely survived the other day is one consequence of that decision. Now you're talking about flying into the heart of a deeply inimical, wildly hostile and considerably more advanced civilization, and attacking what I'd guess to be one of their primary resources. To be frank, it sounds like suicide.'

  'I know how it sounds, but it's the only way to get the Mos Hadroch to function the way it's intended to.'

  'And just what is that?' he asked, stepping closer. 'You mentioned something about a "vulnerability".'

  In that moment Dakota herself looked as small, frail and vulnerable as he'd ever seen her. 'It's difficult to explain.'

  'I just killed a man, and risked the crew of our flagship on an expedition halfway across the galaxy to track this thing down, and that's the best you can say?'

  'Let me remind you of the facts,' she replied, her tone defiant. 'The Emissaries are already on their way. The swarm is still out there somewhere, looking for the Mos Hadroch. You're just going to have to take me on trust for now, because I'm pretty much working out things as I go along.'

  'Assuming we really have found the Mos Hadroch,' he pointed out, 'and not just an alien corpse.'

  She was silent as he finished buttoning his shirt up. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, thinking hard, before turning to her again.

  'Who else knows you're here on Redstone?'

  'Nobody apart from you and Ted Lamoureaux.'

  'Good, let's keep it that way.'

  'Why keep it a secret?'

  'Because the more I think about it, the more I think things are going to get very nasty. If my enemies even suspected you were here, they might consider it de facto proof that I was planning an attack on the frigate.'

  She slid off the bed and came towards him. 'And are you?'

  'Let's say I've already been thinking of contingency plans in case things didn't work out the way I wanted them to.'

  'So when were you thinking of putting them into action?'

  Corso stared out at the helical twist of girders that framed the Senate building, before answering, 'As soon as possible.'

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lamoureaux was already there a few days later, when Corso arrived at the spaceport a few kilometres outside Unity. Its turbos humming loudly, his automated taxi blew up a storm of grit as it dropped down on to the blackened concrete plain a short distance from the vehicle that had brought Lamoureaux.

  Lamoureaux wore a fur-lined parka, a cheap breather mask strapped over his mouth and nose. The sun was bright, but still low on the horizon, burning away the freezing mist that clung to the ground.

  'Ted,' Corso greeted him, climbing out of the taxi and stepping towards the other man. 'Thanks for coming here.'

  Lamoureaux nodded uncertainly. 'I don't know if you heard the news this morning.'

  'I'm afraid I did, yes.'

  The Consortium had finally made their move, taking over the research station servicing the cache within the Tierra system. Legislate – registered military cruisers equipped with newly minted superluminal drive-cores had moved in, while Fleet representatives throughout the system had been placed under arrest.

  Lamoureaux nodded. 'Now maybe you can tell me why I had to come to Redstone under an assumed identity, without my Magi ship.'

  'I'm sorry about all the subterfuge, but it was necessary, believe me. I needed to be sure nobody knew you were here at all.'

  'I watched some of the local news broadcasts. They really don't like people with implants here, do they?'

  'Not generally, no.'

  Lamoureaux reached up to fiddle with his mask. Corso saw he hadn't put it on right, and stepped forward to adjust the straps for him.

  'I don't know how the hell you manage to go around with these things on,' Lamoureaux muttered. 'I've only been out in the open for twenty minutes, and already it's driving me crazy.'

  'I grew up having to wear these things any time I went outdoors,' Corso replied, stepping away again. 'And it gets to be second nature. Might as well complain about having to hold your breath if you go diving. How does that feel?'

  'Better,' Lamoureaux admitted, tentatively touching the device where it pressed against his face, 'though I'd still rather not be wearing it at all. Now, do you mind telling me why all the subterfuge?'

  'Because there's an extraordinary motion due to go through the Senate this morning to have me removed from my seat and placed under arrest on charges of sedition against the state,' Corso explained.

  'Then we have to get you out of here promptly. We need to get you back to Ocean's Deep.'

  'No.' Corso shook his head. 'By the time we got back there, it'd be just as dangerous. Think about it: the strike against the cache, the dispute over the Mjollnir – it's all tied together. Now there are rumours the Mjollnir's going to be leaving orbit again in a few days' time.'

  'But it only just got here,' Lamoureaux protested.

  'Nonetheless, I've got good intelligence it's headed for the Sol system. We can't allow that to happen.'

  'So what do you plan on doing?'

  'We need to get on board and take control before it can leave.'

  Lamoureaux searched his face. 'You're serious, aren't you? What was the point of fighting Jarret, then?'

  'I made the mistake of thinking the people behind him would stick to their own rules. But they were just gambling I'd be the one to wind up dead, and thus solve all their problems.'

  Lamoureaux shivered. 'You haven't told me exactly where we'd take the Mjollnir.'

  'Did you know Dakota's still alive?'

  Lamoureaux nodded warily. 'Now that you mention it, yes. I didn't know until she got in touch with me a few days ago, asking me not to tell anyone. I didn't even know if she'd told anyone else.'

  'She came to me a few nights ago and said me she wants to take the Mos Hadroch into Emissary territory, to one of their own caches. She claims that's the only way it can work.'

  'Fly the Mjollnir into Emissary territory? That's crazy.'

  Corso smiled grimly under his mask. 'If you've got any better ideas, I can't wait to hear them. Because I've been doing nothing but trying to think of alternatives and, assuming Dakota isn't insane or making up stories, I can't think of any.'

  'Things might be a lot simpler if she was crazy.'

  'She claimed she died out there when she tracked the Maker down,' Corso told him. 'That it destroyed her and her ship, but that it somehow preserved her mind and transmitted it to another ship closer to home. I want to know if you think that's remotely possible.'

  'Shit.' Lamoureaux stamped his feet a few times on the frozen concrete, and shoved his gloved hands deeper into the recesses of his silvered parka. He stared off into the distance for several moments, towards a couple of rapid-orbit cargo ships idling on the concrete a few kilometres away, steam trickling out from their main nacelles.

  'All right,' he said at last, 'you're worried she's been hit by whatever's taken down a lot of other machine-heads. What I would say is that she isn't any crazier than any of the rest of them, and none of them has shown the least sign of being delusional. And also there are… depths to the Magi ships I can't even begin to explain to someone who hasn't experienced them. The Magi were verging on godlike when they disappeared, Senator, so I suspect it's probably the least of the tricks they could pull off.'

  He stared past Corso, chewing the inside of a cheek.

  'You've got something else on your mind?'

  Lamoureaux met his eyes. 'I've got to tell you, Senator, that interstellar piracy was pretty high on my list of career options when I was twelve years old, but I'm balking at it now.'

  Corso grinned. 'Did I even say you were coming along?'


  Lamoureaux laughed, the sound strangely muffled by his breather mask. 'I'm not sure what else you expect me to do. My Magi ship is still back at Ocean's Deep, otherwise maybe I'd be able to grab control of the Mjollnir.' He shrugged. 'Dakota could do the same.'

  'No, she couldn't – and neither could you. The Mjollnir's had manual circuit breakers installed in case of exactly that eventuality.'

  'Huh?' Lamoureaux shook his head. 'But surely that's crazy. Don't the Freehold have their own machine-heads now?'

  'Yes, out of necessity, but they don't really trust them either.'

  Ships all throughout the Consortium had been hastily modified to prevent them from being taken over by hostile machine-heads linked to Magi ships. A lot of damage could be effected in the brief seconds it took an unaugmented human pilot to react to a hostile takeover, but once he had thrown the switch, the attack could be stopped immediately.

  'Well, that makes it a little more complicated, doesn't it? If Dakota's also going on this expedition of yours, you won't need me, will you?'

  'On the contrary,' Corso replied. 'I'd need you along to help me keep an eye on her, and because I need people with me I can trust. So what do you say?'

  Lamoureaux scuffed one booted foot against the concrete before letting his shoulders sag as if in defeat. 'What else am I going to do, Senator? Sit around along with everyone else and wait for the Emissaries to arrive? It's not much of a choice.'

  Corso grinned and put a hand on the machine-head's shoulder. 'I don't even know if it's going to come to an armed assault, but it might.'

  'You have the resources to do that?'

  Corso nodded. 'The Mjollnir's going to have only a skeleton crew when we board, so it's extremely unlikely we'll face any serious opposition. Not that you'd be expected to carry a gun or anything like that; you'd be following us in only once we feel sure it's safe.'

  'So who else is going?'

  'Hopefully the Mjollnir's usual commander, a man named Martinez, and one or two of his senior staff. I'm not sure the expedition would even have happened if not for him. He's currently under house arrest, but I'm working on tracking him and the others down. White-cloud's been spirited away, but assuming we find him too, he's coming with us. Leo Olivarri and Ray Willis should get here any day. Once I've had a chance to explain what I've got in mind, I'm hoping they'll agree to come along also.'